Column: Life after Rice vague, but clear in nature

By Taylor Johnson     5/15/08 7:00pm

As a man of generally few outspoken opinions, trying to choose what to write for my first and last column as an undergraduate at Rice was rather difficult. Looking within the hedges there were many options: From lambasting the administration for the lack of both outdoor power outlets for laptops, among other issues, at the new Brochstein Pavilion, to recommending improvements in writing and communication for the undergraduate engineering education at Rice, no topic seemed broad enough. Looking beyond the hedges to November's election or global warming seemed too detached. In truth, as cliché a topic as it is, the only thing that seemed worth discussing was moving on to the next phase of life and the choices we have outside the hedges as Rice graduates.Looking back four years ago to graduation from high school, it seemed like there were so many choices. In retrospect though, there were few choices beyond picking which school to continue studying at for an undergraduate education. Going to college was not a choice, but rather, a mandate. While not true for every high school graduate, this is certainly true for most students at Rice.

Really, what we should have been considering when we graduated from high school was what we wanted to do with our lives, and we should continue to consider that now. In my view, life should be about maximizing one's happiness or utility. For some, that may be making a ridiculous sum of money, while for others, that may be making little or no money to help those in the world who are in need. For everyone else, it may just be making it by, living one day to the next, trying to enjoy life's roller coaster ride the whole way. Sure, Rice graduates are supposed to go out and take over the world, but the plethora of possibilities is rather overwhelming, especially when compared to the directive given when coming out of high school with the college track set.

What if I make the wrong choice and am not as happy as I could be had I taken a more risky option? The answer to this comes from a dear friend and teacher here at Rice, Paul Hester: "We all have to do something." While this answer does not have the rigorous certainty I demand as an engineer, it contains great comfort within it: no matter what we choose to do, we are doing something, and that is good. Whatever we end up doing, it is better than doing nothing and just passively letting the world go by.

---

---

As scary as it is, at certain times in our lives we are faced with a final choice. But the beauty of being young in our relatively free country is that those choices are nearly unlimited, and none of those choices are really binding. We can go to college and decide what to major in later. Even after deciding upon a major, we can change our minds about what we want to do as a career. In fact, the majority of Americans with undergraduate degrees work in careers outside of their undergraduate specialization. In the end, it is irrelevant, because later we will have to make more choices to branch our lives.

All of these are relevant personal decisions, but what does it matter in the end? The ultimate ultimatum, death, is hardly a choice. In the face of that realization, we must maximize our time here and make the best of the many gifts we have been given. We must go out and do what is not only good for the world, but what makes us happy!

Taylor Johnson is a Wiess College senior.

---